Metairie man who survived D-Day invasion of Normandy to be honored by France

Clarence 'Mac" Evans will receive the Legion of Honor medal during a ceremony at the National World War II Museum

At first, Clarence “Mac” Evans of Metairie said, he thought the letter from France’s ambassador to the United States was a gag. On July 19, French Republic President Francois Hollande named the 86-year-old World War II veteran who survived the 1944 allied D-Day invasion of Normandy a “Chevalier de la legion d’honneur,” or a French Knight in the order of the Legion of Honor, according to the Aug. 7 letter from Frederic Dore at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C.

View full sizeMatthew Hinton, The Times-PicayuneClarence "Mac" Evans, a West Virginia native who lives in Metairie, charged ashore at Omaha Beach and survived the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion known as D-Day. He went on to fight across Europe winning many medals, including those seen here.

“Well, I thought it was a big joke my friends were playing on me,” Evans said Friday. “I called the consulate on (the following) Monday morning and they said it was no joke, it was legitimate.”

He wasted no time in having the letter and its envelope framed and hung on a wall in the apartment he shares with his son, Jeffrey. And in a ceremony at the National World War II Museum on Sunday, Jean-Claude Brunet, the counsel general of France in New Orleans, will present Evans with the Legion of Honor medal.

Luc Soleau, a spokesman for the French consulate in New Orleans, said the French government has for years bestowed the honor upon every World War II veteran who fought in France or for its liberation.

“It is important to reward the courage of the persons who fought in the name of freedom, our shared values, and it reinforces the ties between the U.S. and France,” Soleau said.

A native of Clarksburg, W.Va., who has lived in the New Orleans area since 1966, Evans lied about being 16 years old when he applied to enlist in the U.S. Army. He was 17 on June 6, 1944, when as a 135-pound soldier in G Company, 2nd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, he stormed ashore in the first wave at Omaha Beach in a LCVP, a New Orleans-built Higgins Boat. His 11 months of fighting across Europe began at 6:30 a.m., that day.

“It was a slaughter,” Evans said. “Company A and Company B went in right on target, and within 30 minutes, both companies were gone.”

His G Company was supposed to land with A and B companies but was forced to go ashore about 3/4-mile away. There, Nazi bunkers were invisible to the Navy destroyers miles offshore that were supposed to remain in an area already swept for mines. But unable to effectively target the Nazi bunkers, the destroyer squadron’s commander ordered the group to leave the safe waters and to move closer to shore.

“Then the five-inch guns, they could see where they were shooting,” Evans said. “And those five-inch guns were firing flat trajectories, and that’s when things started to break loose. So we really owe our debt of holding the beach to the destroyers of the Navy and to the paratroopers inland that kept the enemy from sending in reinforcements.”

But G Company was left a rudderless unit stuck on the beach, its command structure decimated, Evans said. “None of us knew what to do. We had no leadership. The leadership was mostly dead. We were 17, 18, 19 years old, so we didn’t know how to lead.”

A combat engineer lieutenant from the 1st Infantry Division, which landed next to the 29th Division, “plopped down and said, ‘All you men that don’t have weapons, get a weapon from a dead soldier. You men who have rain coats, spread them out, dismantle your weapons, get the sand out. We’re getting off this beach,’” Evans said. “We did that, and he took us off the beach.”

“From then on, I spent the next three days with the 1st Division, before getting back to my unit,” he said.

Evans said he would only accept the Legion of Honor in the name of the more than 4,000 soldiers of the 29th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit comprising troops from West Virginia and Maryland, who died during its 11-month European campaign that followed D-Day, and for the paratroopers who landed behind Nazi lines on D-Day. But, he warns, he doesn’t want to be regarded as a hero.

“The heroes were buried over there,” he said. “They’re still there. I’m very uncomfortable with the word hero. I didn’t do anything heroic. A lot of people did.”